Beyond Measure: A Film & Discussion

Join your colleagues for a viewing of the newly released documentary film Beyond Measure and a post-viewing discussion of its implications for higher education with Dr. Roger Gonzalez, Chairman of the Department of Engineering Education and Leadership at the University of Texas, El Paso. Dr. Gonzalez, his program, and his UTEP students are featured in the film.

About Beyond Measure:

Rather than ask why our students fail to measure up, this film asks us to reconsider the greater purpose of education. What if our education system valued personal growth over test scores? Put inquiry over mimicry? Encouraged passion over rankings? What if we decided that the higher aim of school was not the transmission of facts or formulas, but the transformation of every student? And what if this paradigm-shift was driven from the ground up? By students, parents, and educators? By all of us?

In the newly released documentary Beyond Measure, we find a revolution brewing in public schools across the country. From rural Kentucky to New York City, schools that are breaking away from an outmoded, test-driven education are shaping a new vision for our classrooms. These are schools that see critical thinking, communication, exploration, experimentation, collaboration, and creativity as the key to good education. And they are dramatically improving outcomes for children of all backgrounds. They are schools where practically every student graduates and goes on to finish college.

Beyond Measure offers a positive picture of what’s possible in American education when communities decide they are ready for change.

Roger V. Gonzalez, Ph.D., P.E., is the Inaugural Chairman and Professor of the Department of Engineering Education and Leadership at the University of Texas, El Paso. He also serves as the Director of the Engineering Leadership program for the College of Engineering. Dr. Gonzalez earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1986 from UTEP. He earned his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow and the premier Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northwestern Medical School. Professor Gonzalez has been recognized for scholarly work, education innovation, and socio-entrepreneurial humanitarian efforts. He is known and respected for actively incorporating students into all three of these areas. Dr. Gonzalez is also the Founder and President of LIMBS International (www.limbs.org), a 501(c)3 non-profit humanitarian organization that designs, creates and deploys prosthetic devices to transform the lives of amputees in the developing world by restoring their ability to walk.